


Eyes the color of tsiraki

by inthegrayworld



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Angst and Humor, Drinking, IBB2017, Imperial Big Bang, Imperials, M/M, Writing/Art challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-19
Updated: 2017-08-19
Packaged: 2018-12-17 07:48:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11847132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inthegrayworld/pseuds/inthegrayworld
Summary: For Imperial Big Bang 2017, which brings together a couple of characters, at least one of whom is Imperial. Shenanigans must ensue.This one is about Sinjir Rath Velus flirting with Darth Vader, and the consequences of this. Originally meant to be a hilarious crackship, but as is wont to happen with anything involving Anakin Skywalker, it got a little angsty.Fic by inthegrayworld.tumblr.comColor art by chrisdoof.tumblr.comBlack and white art by badsadspacedads.tumblr.com





	Eyes the color of tsiraki

**Author's Note:**

> This being a Big Bang project, it was up to the writer to come up with three different prompts, one of which the artist would then work off. I had a couple of fairly thought-out prompts (one involving Rae Sloane meeting Tarkin, another with Thrawn and Pryce having dinner together), and one weird shit prompt that I came up with just for the sake of having a third prompt (while drunk. Was a number of beers in when I realized 'oh shit I haven't made my IBB2017 application yet let me do that now, nothing shall go wrong. . . ). That prompt was "Sinjir Rath Velus attempts to flirt with Darth Vader." Guess which me and chrisdoof decided to go with.
> 
> Turns out that idea had legs, and Chris (Chris, keeper of timelines, and bouncer off of story ideas) and I ran away with it. 
> 
> It is to Chris' great credit that they came up with that spectacular color art (included here) with nothing but the bare bones of the story and my inane rambling to go on. Chris was also supposed to come up with the black and white art, but was suddenly stricken by cervical disc herniation, which is an everloving bitch to be stricken by. Badsadspacedads came in as pinch hitter and came up with not just a black and white art, but a short comic. It is my great joy to have worked with these two artists.
> 
> Hyeeenjoy :D

Sinjir Rath Velus knocked back his—what was it now—fourth, fifth shot? It was tsiraki, an amber-colored variety, hot in the throat, cold in the belly. It tasted like armpit.  
  
You’d think the officer’s social bay in a top-class vessel like the _Ultimatum_ would be able to serve actual decent alcohol. But at the very least, it was getting Sinjir through the conversation with the man he had sidled up beside on the bar, Rear Admiral What’s His Name. And while What’s His Name wasn’t particularly interesting, he had been the only man in the room who had not gawked at Sinjir’s Loyalty Officer uniform.  
  
“So what do you do?” What’s His Name had asked.  
  
Trick question. Everyone knew what the Loyalty Officers did.  
  
“If you ever end up in the cells, you’ll find out,” Sinjir had said, showing teeth in the rough approximation of a smile. “But I’m sure a fine upstanding gentleman like yourself has no reason to find trouble.”  
  
Now, a solid half hour into talking about TIE pilot production quotas, Sinjir had decided that the only reason he hadn’t bailed yet was that the man had dimples. Well, a dimple. A tiny crease in the corner of his chin.  
  
_How far have my standards fallen_ , Sinjir thought, nodding, asking non-harmful questions, making that throat noise that could have been laughter. At least What’s His Name seemed to be taking the bait. He’d brushed the back of Sinjir’s wrist not once, but twice, and there was a growing gleam in his eye.  
  
“Pilots don’t grow on trees, you know—“ he was saying.  
  
“Yes, trees—“  
  
“That’s exactly what I’ve been telling my superiors—“ his voice suddenly disappeared. The half a dimple vanished.  
  
Through the vague alcohol haze that had settled around Sinjir, he suddenly realized that the entire room had fallen silent.  
  
Footsteps came from behind him - heavy and loud, even through the constant thrum that pervaded the Ultimatum. Slow too. Deliberately so. Someone making an entrance, Sinjir’s training told him. Someone seeking to intimidate.  
  
There came a low, deep breath, through a metal respirator, and Sinjir knew exactly who it was before he stepped to the side.  
  
Darth Vader.  
  
The Rear Admiral had lost all color on his face.  
  
A conversation transpired between Vader and Sinjir’s companion, something that began with “Rear Admiral, your pilot quotas have been pitiful”, and went into What’s His Name making all manner of excuses, as every sentient in the room counted down the minutes for the inevitable to happen. By Sinjir’s count, it took a minute and a half.  
  
Admiral What’s His Name clutched at his throat, fell to his knees, made curt dying noises before his eyes rolled back into his head.  
  
As he did, Sinjir found himself in full view of Darth Vader - fabled enforcer of the Emperor, wearer of black capes, and strangler of incompetents.  
  
A small voice appeared in Sinjir’s mind - the voice of sensibility, of wisdom. _Don’t do it. Just. Don’t—_  
  
But the words came out before Sinjir could stop himself.  
  
“I was talking to that guy.”  
  
The silence that sank into the room was like the void of outer space.  
  
A knot appeared in Sinjir’s guts, something that was part terror and part arousal, though which took precedent he wasn’t sure. The knot only tightened when the silence was broken by the exhalation that poured heavily from Vader’s respirator, as he turned, slowly, towards Sinjir.  
  
“Loyalty Officer,“ in that voice that according to all reports was the last thing members of the Rebellion heard before being sliced in half. “Do you know who you are speaking to?”  
  
_Stop_ , the little voice in Sinjir’s mind said. _Don’t make it worse, he’s going to kill you—_  
  
“Am I not speaking to Darth Vader?”  
  
Dammit.  
  
The tip of Sinjir’s lip edged out into a grin. A practiced motion he had done any number of times before, in any number of cantinas, with any number of interesting men.  
  
_Man or not_ , an entirely different voice whispered in Sinjir’s head—the one Sinjir liked to think of as the voice of raunchy sauciness— _Vader is interesting._  
  
“I’m Sinjir Rath Velus,” he heard himself say, the syllables plunking into the silence like solid rounds into sheet metal.  
  
Sinjir raised his glass to his lips, wondering what the hell he was doing. It was like watching an avalanche thundering down, except he was the idiot right in the avalanche’s path.  
  
And because he was going to die anyway, Sinjir fixed his stare right into the glassy blackness of that mask, where his own reflection appeared warped.  
  
“Buy an officer a drink, my lord?”  
  
And he winked.  
  
At Darth Vader.

 

  
The swill was searing down Sinjir’s throat, landing icy cold in his guts.  
  
_This is a terrible way to die_ , the voice of wisdom said. _Or a very good one_ , argued the voice of sauciness.  
  
Any moment now, would be the invisible hands clenched around his throat, lights appearing behind his eyes before he sank to the floor, joining the body of poor What’s His Name. Any moment now.  
  
No one else might have noticed the difference in the way Vader stood, but unspoken language was Sinjir’s bread and butter. There was just the smallest change in Vader’s posture, in the set of his shoulders. Those gloved hands were loose at his sides.  
  
Vader was surprised.  
  
A strange feeling came upon Sinjir, something he initially took to be the alcohol buzz sweeping through his mind. But this wave crashed hard, swept out, around him, into him. An entirely different voice appeared in his ear, one Sinjir didn’t recognize at all.  
  
‘ _What the fuck—_ ‘ it seemed to say. Confused. Mystified. Searching. ‘ _What the hell are you on about—_ ‘  
  
‘ _I don’t know,_ ’ Sinjir thought back, as the wave pooled around his thoughts. Memories rose up to the forefront of his mind - snatches of his evening , every single drink he’d downed since the evening began, every night he had spent like this.  
  
Just as quickly the wave pulled back and Sinjir found himself clutching the bar to keep from stumbling forward.  
  
In the time it took for Sinjir to blink, Vader had swept around, cape brushing the edge of Sinjir’s arm.  
  
“Carry on,” Vader said, voice heavy through the respirator. And suddenly Vader was marching away, the baffled stomp of stormtroopers trailing behind, after which came the buzzing of whispers, most of which were variations of “What the _fuck_ , Rath Velus?” Like that weird voice had murmured in his head.  
  
Sinjir grasped at his glass. He didn’t have an answer.  
  
  
  
Contrary to all expectation (to all sense, really), Sinjir was still alive.  
  
Alive, and lying back in his bunk, listening to the toneless hum from the ventilation grate over his bed. Alone too, but not for lack of trying.  
  
For the hundredth time he wondered why the hell Vader hadn’t killed him. Was it pity? Amusement? Or was he really just that inconsequential that killing him and leaving him alive made absolutely no difference?  
  
_Enough—_ Sinjir told himself, exhaling through clenched teeth. He ran his hands through his hair, ignoring the beginnings of the hangover that would plague him the following day.  
  
It was over. And in just a few hours he’d be back in the cells, going through his list. As he did all day. Every day.  
  
The trouble with that kind of lifestyle was that the routine frequently followed him into his dreams.  
  
This night was no different.  
  
As in reality, the cell was a small, gray room bisected by a simple desk. Sinjir sat on one side, and the interviewee sat on the other. Tonight, the interviewee was a vague figure, their voice, gender, uniform lost in a smudge of color and memory. But Sinjir followed the minute changes in their posture, the way their voice softened, tightened, all the tell tale signs they were avoiding telling him the truth.  
  
Sinjir was asking questions (the usual ones - did you speak to the Rebel collaborator? Did you know that you were in violation of the Imperial Code of Conduct? Blah blah blah). The interviewee quailed, explained, pleaded. The details were lost on Sinjir, but he was certain he’d have to start getting persuasive.  
  
But something gave him pause.  
  
There was something odd, in the corner of the cell, where a strange shadow formed where the two walls touched.  
  
Sinjir drifted towards it ignoring the pleading of the interviewee behind the desk.  
  
That—that wasn’t supposed to be there—  
  
He reached out to the darkness, finding, as one does in dreams, that the shadow was actually fabric under his fingers. A heavy length of pitch black cloth.  
  
Not just cloth, Sinjir realized. A curtain.  
  
Without turning back, he pulled it aside and stepped through.  
  
  
It was dark here, except for a few stripes of dim light, that Sinjir saw upon approaching them were at the edge of a familiar bar, underneath a familiar line of piss-colored bottles.  
  
Sinjir smirked. The officer’s social bay. Empty now, deep into the Ultimatum’s night cycle.  
  
Sinjir settled himself at the same stool, propped his elbows on the bar. If he was right, (and he was hoping he was right), this was now one of those kind of dreams, the sort that involved meeting a beautiful stranger who would make him regret waking up.  
  
Right on cue came footsteps. A slow, deliberate walk.  
  
Sinjir swiveled in his seat, not quite knowing what—who—to expect but the figure that emerged from the darkness sent a tight squeeze right through Sinjir’s lungs.  
  
He did not have the imagination to make up someone this beautiful.  
  
“Loyalty Officer Sinjir Rath Velus,” the man said. Gods, but he was tall.  
  
That outfit wasn’t quite a uniform - a dark robe, earth-colored garments, scuffed and torn at the sleeves. Something about the outfit brought to mind old holovids from the Clone Wars, though Sinjir couldn’t quite place why. The lines of the man’s face were as hard as the fall of his hair was soft, a contrast that came to light in his eyes, which Sinjir felt he could behold all night, but was afraid to.  
  
“May I join you?” he asked.  
  
For a preposterous moment, Sinjir felt like he was back in the Imperial Academy, gawking at the upperclassmen.  
  
“Um. Yeah,” he made a vague gesture towards the seat next to him, scrambled to find his words while noticing very pointedly that the stranger smelled of the outdoors, of dried sweat, and just the vaguest whiff of capital ship hangar bays.  
  
“Do I know you?” Sinjir asked. Which was ridiculous, of course he didn’t know who this was. He would have remembered meeting someone like this before. But something about the settle of those shoulders - those very broad shoulders—  
  
“I doubt it,” the man said, a smirk deepening at the corner of his mouth, which between that and the prominent scar over his left eye was doing something fierce to Sinjir’s crotch.  
  
“Uh—yeah,” Sinjir forced a smile that was meant to exude confidence. “How about a drink?”  
  
Sinjir reached out, unsurprised to find that his hand had closed around a bottle. Even without reading the label, he knew that it was tsiraki—the good stuff, not like that garbage in the real officer’s social bay—welled up from a memory of That Night he had spent getting profoundly drunk in that one base in Vardos. He poured the stranger a glass, hoping with a ridiculous amount of concern that the stranger would like the vintage.  
  
The man stared at the amber-colored liquid, swished the ice around the rim.  
  
There was something about the way he looked at it—hesitation? Uncertainty? Not a drinker, Sinjir thought. But not that he’d never had a drink either. But this was definitely unusual for him…  
  
Sinjir knocked his own glass against the man’s. “Cheers.”  
  
The man took it in one go, coughed, lips spread thin over his teeth. He was grinning.  
  
“That,” he wiped his lips with the back of a black glove. “That’s something else.”  
  
Sinjir smiled - a real one. It was not, Sinjir determined, that the man was unused to taking a swig, but it had been a while. His were the motions of someone trying to rediscover a once-familiar groove. He noticed Sinjir staring.  
  
“I know that look,” he said. “You’re like a droid performing a scan.”  
  
“Force of habit,” Sinjir said. “Though in fairness, even if it weren’t, it would be difficult not to look.”  
  
The man chuckled, eyes sliding momentarily to the floor, both like he was pleased, but also that he wasn’t quite sure what to do with being pleased. It was immensely endearing.

  
  
“There’s something I haven’t heard in a while,” the man said.  
  
“Impossible,” Sinjir said. “Guy like you? People should be tripping over themselves to offer you a drink.”  
  
A strange look came onto his face. His eyes, Sinjir thought, were the exact same gold as the tsiraki.  
  
“Maybe,” he said.  
  
He put the glass down, cocked his head to the side.  
  
“So what do you see in me?” he asked.  
  
“Besides the obvious? You’re not Imperial. Or if you are, you don’t give a damn about the rules.” Sinjir stroked his chin with a look of mock seriousness, a detective solving a mystery.  
  
“Also, you’re not used to approaching people out of the blue to say hello. Which—hey, lucky for me.”  
  
That gold-tinged gaze sharpened. “Go on.”  
  
“So if you’ve decided to sit with me, either I strike your fancy, or you’re in terrible want of company,” Sinjir said. Without knowing why, he added, “Or both.”  
  
Sinjir leaned back, distantly wondering how his mind remained acute despite the fact he was dreaming. “You’re a warrior of some sort. A soldier. Maybe you could have been something else…” That whiff of starfighter grease. “A pilot maybe.” Dark stains on his sleeves. “Or a mechanic.”  
  
A deep impression on the corner of his belt, where an object might regularly be clipped to. A tool, probably. But Sinjir would have bet credits it was a weapon.  
  
“You’re best at being a soldier. And you know it.” The man’s back had straightened, his grip tight around the glass. It should have been a warning, but Sinjir was on a roll.  
  
“It’s the one thing you’ve got going for you no matter what,” Sinjir said. “And you know it.”  
  
There was something unpleasant in the way the man smiled, that made Sinjir pause.  
  
“True,” he said. “You’re very good, the ISB must be proud.”  
  
Sinjir snorted. “Those bastards just need me to hit my monthly traitor quota. Oh the joys of Imperial bureaucracy. I didn’t say that, by the way.”  
  
The man stared a bit too deeply.  
  
“Well, what do you make of me?” Sinjir asked.  
  
He felt familiar tide rushing in and out of him, pulling back the sand from what he’d buried underneath.  
  
“You don’t fear dying,” the man said.  
  
Sinjir laughed at that—tried to. “Not true, I am so afraid of dying.”  
  
“Let me be more precise,” the man said. “There are some things that you fear worse than dying, which every now and then, makes you act recklessly.”  
  
The man reached towards Sinjir, slowly, but like a rat in the split-second it lands in the sights of a Loth-cat, Sinjir found that he could not move.  
  
The man’s glove was rough against the side of his face, the grip beneath it strong. Sinjir got the sense of being caught in a vice, like the hand underneath the glove was machine, not human.  
  
“That does sound like me,” Sinjir mumbled. He couldn’t suppress the chill that was settling in his bones. It occurred to him that no matter how fast he moved—no matter how quickly he ran—this man would be able to catch him, with no trouble at all.  
  
“You search for moments to fly in the face of sense—because in those moments you feel—“  
  
“I feel,” Sinjir agreed. The man’s thumb slid against his chin.  
  
“You feel alive,” his voice had dropped low. “But it isn’t just that…”  
  
The man’s eyebrows scrunched together. The pull that Sinjir felt within him verged on painful.  
  
“It is only in those moments that you can forget how truly alone you are.”  
  
Sinjir knew well enough how to keep a poker face. But his jaw tensed. The sudden urge to look away was overpowering. But instead, he made himself return the man’s gaze.  
  
“That,” he said, as lightly as he could manage, “Is something we have in common.”  
  
  
The man’s hand dropped lower, following the contour of Sinjir’s jaw, fingers firm at the back of Sinjir’s neck. The tip of his thumb grazed Sinjir’s lower lip, before sliding down to a stop right where the latch of a pristine Imperial uniform collar hooked shut.  
  
“You have balls, I’ll give you that,” the man said, voice barely above a whisper.  
  
When Sinjir drew breath, it was against the press of the man’s grip, his pulse beating against that leather grip.  
  
“Tell me who you are,” Sinjir said.  
  
The man leaned forward, whispered conspiratorially in Sinjir’s ear. There was no escape from those roiling, fire-colored eyes.  
  
“Haven’t you figured it out yet, Sinjir Rath Velus?”  
  
A pit opened up in Sinjir’s guts, all strength abandoning his limbs. His lips moved, sound barely getting past the clench of his jaw.  
  
“Lord Vader.”  
  
Vader—the man under the mask?—gave him a terrible smile. “Very good,” he said.  
  
By the smallest of increments, the grip around Sinjir’s throat tightened. Sweat broke out on his back, but he did not move. It seemed that the rumors about Lord Vader’s sorcerous powers were true.  
  
“Are you going to kill me?” Sinjir asked.  
  
“Why shouldn’t I? You’re too impertinent for your own good.”  
  
The thundering in Sinjir’s chest was so loud, he could have sworn Vader could hear it too. Maybe the monster enjoyed the sound of it. Except—was it fear? A fluttering was making its way up Sinjir’s chest, rising up to his head.  
  
_You do not fear death_ , he had been told just a moment earlier.  
  
Sinjir had meant what he said in response. Of course he feared death.  
  
But right now, at this moment, close enough to see the creases at the corners of Vader’s eyes, an entirely different notion possessed him. This was precisely what he felt back out in the bar earlier in the evening.  
  
It made him lift a hand, and let it drift ever so softly against Vader’s shoulder, as though all he meant was to brush a stray hair that had landed there.  
  
“If this should be the night I die, I’m damn well not going to spend it shitting myself,” Sinjir said.   He leaned forward against the press of Vader’s hand, but there was nothing in his movements that suggested he wanted a fight. The exact opposite, more like.  
  
The creases at the corners of Vader’s eyes deepened. Questions bubbled up in Sinjir’s mind. He recognized that voice in his head now. ‘ _Again? You must be fucking mad—_ ‘ It had nothing of Vader’s bravado or posturing. It was like any young man might ask, ‘ _Really? Me?_ ’  
  
Those fingers unclasped, and Sinjir found himself moving forward, on the momentum of a feeling that he suspected was far too big to ever really dissipate - just that he’d learned to tuck it away in the daylight hours, to pretend that it did not scramble within him.  
  
“If I die here,“ Sinjir breathed, “I’m going to use these last few moments to take something with me.”  
  
Straw-colored hair brushed against his cheek, their noses bumping when Sinjir put his mouth over Vader’s. It was just the faintest touch.  
  
But Vader’s hand clamped down around the back of Sinjir’s head with an intensity that made him gasp, stealing the air from his throat.  
  
This wasn’t just hunger—this was years of drought suddenly greeted by rain, and Sinjir didn’t fight it, instead poured himself into it, even when the leather glove closed around a handful of his hair. Sinjir pressed forward, the fabric of Vader’s robe rough under his fingers, thinking, faintly, how Vader’s kiss was like the pull of a collapsing star.  
  
Images came to Sinjir’s mind, none of which made sense to him—stormtroopers gathered together—no, not stormtroopers, the armor was similar though, and when they pulled off their helmets they all shared the same face—a young Togruta girl, he was watching her back as she walked down the stairway, and away forever—a man with a beard, looking down from a precipice, tears in his eyes as around them the ground shook and lava pitched—a woman (Sinjir felt his heart stop for a moment), a woman of incredible beauty and sadness—  
  
Before he could wonder what it all meant, he felt the distant tug of the whine from the ventilation shaft, the sheets on his bed.  
  
Wait, Sinjir thought—he couldn’t leave the dream now—not yet—  
  
He tried to cling to the warmth of Vader’s grip, trying to catch just one more snatch of the stream that frothed around him. If he did, maybe he’d make sense of what all this was—but the dream was running through the gaps in his fingers. A pair of golden eyes were upon him—  
  
—He shuddered, and found himself in bed, staring up at the ventilation grate.  
  
“And I thought I was lonely,” Sinjir mumbled, though he could no longer remember why.  
  
  
They were transferring a substantial number of troops off the _Ultimatum_. The half-slurred word through the other regulars at the social bay was that the Emperor’s battle station was finally operational. Tarkin was already there, that smug bastard.  
  
Sinjir wasn’t surprised when he saw the 501st marching off to their transports. And it wasn’t as though he cared, he was probably going to be assigned off this floating hunk of metal soon enough anyway.  
  
But as he watched the white mass of armor and helmets stomping with that rhythm that he could feel leaning on the railing, he saw Darth Vader making his way down the ranks. Even at this distance, Sinjir could feel the collective straightening of spines when that dark figure walked past.  
  
Darth Vader, Sinjir mused. Carrier of glowy red weapons, fear of stormtroopers. And…what else? Something niggled at the back of Sinjir’s mind. Wearer of masks, he thought. Though what he could have been underneath that mask was entirely beyond Sinjir’s ability to imagine—  
  
Vader was marching toward the landing bay, off to fly his TIE Advanced to the new battle station himself most likely. There was a purposefulness to the way he walked, like a comet set firmly in the direction the myriad, mysterious forces of the galaxy put it. But as Vader passed the exact spot Sinjir watched from, he slowed.  
  
He didn’t quite stop, and no one but Sinjir would have noticed the half second his steps seemed to drag—certainly not the stormtroopers or the officers milling about. But for a moment, Sinjir was convinced that Vader would look up to the walkway that he was perched on, would look at him.  
  
Vader didn’t—he had no reason to. But Sinjir watched as the flow of that cape disappeared into the landing bay, feeling both heat and cold course through him.


End file.
